No More Stolen Lives! Hold Hearings on Institutional Bias! Pass MiCASSA and S.1394
March 18, 2004

For Immediate Release
For information contact;
Bob Kafka 512/431-4085
Marsha Katz 406/544-9504

Washington, D.C.---Determined to be “heard” on removing the nation's institutional bias in Medicaid funded long term care services, 500 ADAPT activists are converging on Washington, D.C. March 20-25. Kicking off the campaign to get legislative hearings scheduled is a March to the White House at sundown on Sunday, March 21. Marchers from all over the country will carry the messages “No More Stolen Lives: End the Institutional Bias” and “No More Waiting for Home and Community Services.”

ADAPT is in D.C. to press Senate Finance Committee Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Ranking Democrat Max Baucus (D-MT) to hold hearings on removing the institutional bias in Medicaid, the nation's major funder of long term care services and supports. There are several bills with bi-partisan support now in Congress which would allow disabled and older Americans to choose to receive their long term care in their own homes instead of being forced into nursing homes as is now the case.

At least two of the bills (S.1394, Money Follows the Person Act, and S.1971, MiCASSA, the Medicaid Home and Community-based Services and supports Act) remain buried in the Senate Finance Committee. ADAPT and the 700 other organizations supporting these bills want Grassley and Baucus to hold hearings and move the bills to the Senate floor.

Medicaid, a state-federal partnership, mandates states to pay for nursing homes, but not for the same services in one's own home. In 1999, in L.C. and E.W. v.s. Olmstead , the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this practice amounts to illegal forced segregation when the person could be adequately served in the community. In 2000, President George Bush issued both an Executive Order mandating implementation of the Olmstead decision, and his New Freedom Initiative which called for all federal Departments to assess and plan for removal of barriers to people with disabilities accessing all aspects of their communities.

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